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1401 Words
The Foundry Quarter was a maze of metal and steam even on a normal night.
Tonight it was a deathtrap.
Elias sprinted between conveyor lines, lungs burning, boots slipping on grease-slick floors. Alarm klaxons wailed overhead, bathing the district in pulsing red light. Steam vents exploded beside him, hissing scalding vapor through fractured pipes.
Behind him, Inquisition soldiers thundered in pursuit.
“Target moving toward Sector Six!”
“Cut him off from the rail lifts!”
“Captain orders capture or kill!”
Their boots beat a merciless rhythm against the steel platforms.
Kira’s voice echoed faintly behind the chaos:
“Elias, run! RUN!”
He didn’t look back.
Not at the workers scattering like frightened birds.
Not at Kira being dragged out of the soldiers’ path by Hargan.
Not at the red-bannered airship descending like a hunting hawk overhead.
He ran.
And his arm—his thing of metal and flesh—kept vibrating with a mechanical pulse, like it wanted to move without him. Like it wanted to fight.
“No,” Elias rasped between breaths. “Not now. Not now—”
A sharp twitch shot up his forearm, and the blade flickered out again, scraping along a stack of metal beams as he stumbled past. Sparks cascaded across the floor.
He sucked in a breath that tasted like ash.
“I said—not—NOW—!”
He grabbed the twitching limb with his good hand and forced it tight against his torso, like pinning a wild animal.
Pain flared.
The gears muffled their whine.
The panic in his chest eased—barely.
But the world around him didn’t.
An Inquisition soldier rounded the corner ahead, rifle already raised.
Elias skidded to a halt, slipping on the oily floor. The soldier’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second at the sight of Elias’s silver-veined arm.
“Down!” the soldier barked. “Hands where I can—”
Elias didn’t wait.
He threw himself sideways as the rifle fired. The shot tore through the steam clouds where his head had been an instant before. He hit the ground hard, rolling across jagged metal scraps.
Pain exploded along his ribs.
The soldier advanced, reloading smoothly.
Elias scrambled up—but before the soldier could fire again, a massive shadow barreled into him.
Hargan.
The foreman slammed the soldier into a crate pile, metal arm clamping around the man’s throat with brutal efficiency.
“GO!” Hargan roared without looking at Elias. “MOVE!”
Elias didn’t argue. He sprinted past the grappling pair, heart pounding, guilt and gratitude mixing in his chest like poison.
More soldiers appeared at the far end of the walkway.
“Target sighted! Take him!”
Elias darted into a side corridor, boots shaking the grated floor.
This part of the factory was worse than the main yard—about twenty degrees hotter, two hundred percent louder, and barely lit. Molten metal flowed through open channels, casting the floor in hellish orange light.
Metalworker hell.
Perfect.
He shoved through a swinging gate and found himself inside the smelting hall—a cavernous chamber filled with towering crucibles and conveyor belts dragging red-hot ingots toward water baths.
The heat punched him in the face.
His sweat evaporated instantly.
Inquisition boots clattered behind him.
“This way!”
“He’s cornering himself!”
“Don’t let him reach the slag pipes!”
Elias didn’t know what the slag pipes were. He didn’t care. He just needed a way out.
His legs trembled. Not from fatigue—but from the strange mechanical feedback rippling through his body, as if something deep inside him was tuning itself.
Recalibrating.
Awakening.
“No,” he whispered again. “I’m not ready. Stop—”
He stumbled over a loose chain.
His injured arm spasmed, blade flashing out. It sliced through a hanging cable, sending sparks raining down.
That’s when he saw it—
A maintenance ladder bolted to the far wall.
Above it, barely visible, a hatch leading into the ventilation ducts.
A narrow escape.
A stupid escape.
But the only one he had.
He sprinted toward it.
A rifle shot cracked—
Pain tore through his shoulder, spinning him sideways. He slammed into the smelter railing, vision blurring.
“Hit confirmed! Moving to secure!”
Elias gasped, clutching the wound. Blood—red blood this time—ran down his back, warm and frighteningly fast.
No time.
No time.
No time.
He forced his legs to move, half-stumbling toward the ladder.
Another shot screamed past his ear, punching a hole in the nearby pipe. Boiling steam blasted out, filling the air with a white-hot roar.
Soldiers coughed, shielded their faces.
Elias grabbed the ladder, hauling himself upward. His wounded shoulder screamed with every movement, vision pulsing black.
The hatch was four meters above.
Three.
Two.
He reached up—and his left arm twitched violently.
“No—”
A jolt of mechanical power surged through him.
Suddenly the blade extended again—but this time, instead of flickering wildly, it locked into place with a heavy metallic click.
Almost… intentional.
Almost like his arm had decided to cooperate.
He stabbed the blade upward.
It sunk into the hatch frame, anchoring him.
Elias gritted his teeth and used it to pull himself the last meter up. His boots slipped on sweat and grease; his shoulder burned like open fire.
But he got there.
He shoved the hatch open—
Cooler air spilled over him.
Hope, sharp and painful, jolted in his chest.
He pulled himself inside.
“HE’S UP THERE!” a voice bellowed below.
“Pull him down!”
“Shoot through the hatch!”
Elias yanked his arm free and slammed the hatch shut.
Bullets hammered the metal surface immediately.
He crawled deeper into the duct.
His arm finally retracted the blade with a soft shudder, like it was tagging the moment:
New function acknowledged.
“Shut up,” Elias hissed at it.
Not that it listened.
He crawled through the cramped duct as rifle shots and shouted orders echoed behind him. Hot metal walls scraped both his arms. His shoulder throbbed with each movement.
Left turn.
Right turn.
Drop down three meters into another duct.
Keep moving.
Every second felt borrowed.
At last, after what felt like an hour trapped in a metal coffin, Elias spotted faint moonlight ahead where the duct opened onto the outside of the smelter hall.
Fresh air.
He pushed himself faster.
The duct ended on a brick ledge overlooking the eastern rail line. Below, trains hissed with cooling steam and workers moved equipment under the watchful eye of Inquisition scouts.
Elias swallowed.
He had climbed out of the frying pan.
Straight into the empire’s teeth.
A hand clamped over his mouth.
He jerked violently, heart leaping into his throat—
“Quiet!” a voice hissed.
Kira.
She dragged him fully out of the duct and pulled him behind a stack of crates, her face smudged with soot and panic.
“You i***t!” she rasped. “You absolute i***t! You ran straight into the rail yard?!”
“I—I didn’t know,” Elias panted. “Everything hurts. Also I think my arm hates me.”
“You think?!” She grabbed his metal-veined wrist and glared at it. “It stabbed a steel hatch, Elias. It’s halfway to having opinions.”
He managed a weak laugh.
Kira’s expression softened, but only for a breath.
“Listen,” she whispered, “the Inquisition sealed the ground exits. But there’s one way out.”
“What way?”
She pointed upward.
Elias followed her gaze.
A supply airship hovered at the far end of the yard—half the size of a battle zeppelin, already loading crates through an open side ramp.
It would be leaving soon.
“One problem,” Kira added quietly.
“Inquisition troops are everywhere. And that thing is the last ride out.”
Elias stared at the airship.
His pulse quickened.
Kira looked at him.
“Well?” she said. “What now, metalboy?”
Elias swallowed hard.
“We fly,” he whispered.
And the Inquisition horn sounded across the yard, signaling that the airship was preparing to depart.
They had minutes.
Maybe less.
And if they failed—
There would be no next chapter for Elias Thorne at all.
- Writer
